Ghost Rider (1990) # 31

"Rise of the Midnight Sons, Part 6"

Cover Date: November 1992; On Sale Date: September 1992 

Writer: Howard Mackie; Artist: Andy Kubert: Inker: Joe Kubert; Letterer: Janice Chiang; Colorist: Gregory Wright; Editor: Bobbie Chase; Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco; Cover Artist: Andy Kubert 

While Dan Ketch navigates through the afterlife, Lilith and her Lilin mourn the death of Meatmarket, who was killed by the Nightstalkers. She tells Pilgrim to teleport them all to the land of the midnight sun, where she will bring all of her exiled children to Earth. While she prepares herself in the Arctic Circle, the various members of the “Nine” (Ghost Rider, John Blaze, Victoria Montesi, Louise Hastings, Sam Buchanan, Frank Drake, Hannibal King, Blade, and Morbius) are teleported away from their various locations by a mysterious individual. 

All nine of them appear together at the Arctic Circle, where they are confronted by Lilith and her Lilin. Pilgrim opens a teleportation rift in Lilith’s chest, which she will use to birth her newest child. Reaching into the void, she grabs hold of Dan Ketch’s soul and brings it to Earth in a monstrous new form as one of her Lilin. Dan tears his way through Ghost Rider, Blaze, and the Nightstalkers before turning on the Lilin. Ghost Rider is able to restrain Dan with his chain and toss him back through the rift while Lilin commands the rest of her Lilin to die in battle, granting her more power. While the others escape, Ghost Rider stays behind to defeat Lilith, seemingly destroying her by making her enter the rift. Ghost Rider collapses and all but Blaze and Morbius are teleported away by the arriving Dr. Strange, who promises to help return Dan to the world of the living. After they depart, only the young Lilin named Nakota is left alive and alone. Suddenly, Lilith emerges from the snow and kills Nakota, promising that her sacrifice will eventually allow Lilith to defeat the Midnight Sons. 

Ghost Rider (1990) # 28

"Rise of the Midnight Sons, Part 1: Visions"

Cover Date: August 1992; On Sale Date: June 1992

Writer: Howard Mackie; Artist: Andy Kubert; Inker: Joe Kubert; Letterer: Janice Chiang; Colorist: Gregory Wright; Editor: Bobbie Chase; Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco; Cover Artist: Andy Kubert

After avenging the rape and death of a woman, a restless and enraged Ghost Rider returns to Cypress Hills Cemetery. John Blaze follows closely behind him, demanding to know what's happened to Danny after Blackout ripped out his throat. The two are interrupted by a strange man with a shovel, who introduces himself as the Caretaker. He says that he's kept an eye on the Rider since he locked Blackout and Stern in the mausoleum weeks before. Ghost Rider enters the crypt, and immediately after the police start shooting at Blaze and the Caretaker. 

Inside, the Rider shares a vision with Danny, who is floating in the void between worlds. Dan sees a light in the darkness, and when he reaches for it, the light turns into a hand. The hand pulls him through a portal, where he sees a vision of different individuals that will assemble to stop the coming of Lilith. The hand that guided him belongs to Lilith herself, who attempts to kill him. Dan escapes back to the void, barely escaping another death. 

Back in the mausoleum, the Ghost Rider is attacked by the newly free Blackout and Stern. The Rider collapses due to the power of Danny's vision, giving the two villains time to make their escape. Blackout opens the crypt door, only to find Lt. Badilino and a virtual army of police surrounding them. Blackout grabs Stern and runs out the door, using the man's invulnerable body as a shield. Badilino enters the mausoleum, wanting the Rider above all others. Before he makes it to the demon, the Caretaker smacks him in the face with his shovel. He and Blaze grab the Rider and carry him out through an underground tunnel. 

When the Ghost Rider awakens, he rants about the vision he shared with Danny. He and Blaze go to the building that houses their motorcycles, only to see Blackout inside. Blaze shoots his gun, but instead hits the bike as Blackout escapes, transforming it into a hellfire cycle. John sits atop the bike and agrees to follow the Rider on his search to find the people in the vision. After they leave, the Caretaker has a chat with Dr. Strange, and the two agree that a great evil is coming.

Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 1

"Rise of the Midnight Sons, Part 2"

Cover Date: August 1992
On Sale Date: June 1992

Writer: Howard Mackie
Artist: Adam Kubert
Inker: Chris Warner
Letterer: Michael Heisler
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Editor: Bobbie Chase
Editor In Chief: Tom DeFalco

Cover Artist: Adam Kubert

On the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, John Blaze and the Ghost Rider ride on their mystical motorcycles, fleeing pursuit by a fleet of New York Police cruisers. When a bullet nearly hits Blaze, he returns fire with his shotgun, momentarily forgetting that the gun shots pure hellfire. When the blast strikes the car, it nearly destroys it, and a shocked Blaze turns his bike around to go help the policemen still in the car. The Ghost Rider assists in dragging the men from the wreckage just as the car explodes. The two vigilantes ride off again while the police have their cars stopped. A few minutes later, atop the Brooklyn Bridge, the Ghost Rider attempts to tell his partner about the vision he and his human host, Dan Ketch, shared. John refuses to believe in the vision, thinking it an hallucination brought on by Dan's death, until the Rider grabs him and forces his Penance Stare upon him...sharing the vision of Lilith and her children. Convinced that the vision is real, Blaze agrees that Lilith must be stopped, but says that he needs to regroup at home before he decides to involve himself.

 

Meanwhile, in Northern Greenland, two explorers uncover an ancient leviathan from the ice. As they examine it, a hand bursts forth from the creature's flesh, killing one of the two men. Lilith is reborn from her prison, and immediately kills the second explorer as well. Using the gore and entrails of the leviathan, she creates a vision of the future, seeing her children slain by the Ghost Rider and Blaze. Realizing that the order of champions must be broken, she calls out to her children...and, immediately after, a portal is slashed in the air, signaling the coming of Pilgrim, who takes his mother to another place.

 

In Rhode Island, Blaze and the Rider approach the grounds of the Quentin Carnival. The carnies are waiting as if they expect to attack, but upon seeing John they let their guard down. Leaving the Rider with the carnival workers, Blaze rides to his trailer where his wife - Roxanne - and two children are waiting for him. She asks what's wrong, to which he replies "nothing I want you involved in."

 

In New York, Pilgrim tells Lilith that most of her children were either killed or went into hiding after her banishment, and that some even live among humans to breed with them. The two then teleport to a church, where another of the Lilin, Creed, sits and prays. Using his ability to separate his body parts into autonomous sections, Creed attacks Pilgrim...but stops when he sees his mother. Despite his protests, Creed has no choice but to obey Lilith, starting his service with an attack on a voyeur that's spying on them through the window. Lilith stays Creed's slaying hand, recognizing the man - Blackout - as one of her grandchildren.

 

Back at the Carnival, Blaze has nightmares of his family being murdered by demons while he is unable to save them. He wakes up and gets dressed, making his way over to the trailer of Clara Menninger, the Carnival's eyeless psychic. She sits John down and gives him a psychic reading, telling him that the walls between dimensions are crumbling. She tells him that he and the Ghost Rider will be responsible for hunting down the demons that have already crossed over into our world. Despite her warnings, John refuses to listen to her and angrily leaves her trailer. He makes his way over to a tent, where the rest of the carnies (and the Ghost Rider) are hanging out. John approaches his friend, the dwarfish acrobat named Wolf, and asks to talk with him.

 

On the Carnival grounds, Pilgrim, Creed, and Blackout arrive. Creed is obviously finds their actions distasteful, but tells the other two that he will succeed in his mission out of familial obligations. Back in the tent, John hears Roxanne scream. He runs out, but is picked up by the Ghost Rider who carries them both on his motorcycle to Blaze's trailer. After a short skirmish with Blackout, Creed takes John's son and has Pilgrim teleport them away. John runs into his trailer and grabs his shotgun, telling the other carnies to stay away from the fight. He straddles his cycle, and he and the Ghost Rider ride into the nearby hills where the Lilin await them.

 

They find the demons in a clearing, and the fight begins immediately. With John's son hostage, Creed tells the two heroes that one of them must die for his obligation to Lilith to end. Deciding that conversation is pointless, Creed blasts the Ghost Rider with mystical energy, thinking that Blaze will let him die. John surprises Creed by blasting him continuously with hellfire until he is broken into his different body parts. With his son in his arms, John tells him that he once made a similar deal with the devil a long time ago and lived to regret it. Deciding to run and fight another day, Pilgrim teleports himself, Blackout, and Creed's severed head back to Lilith.

 

Later, at the Carnival, John packs Roxanne and the children into a van with two of the fellow carnies - George and Mari - and tells them that they'll be safer if he can't find them. Clara then tells Blaze that she had a vision to guide him on his quest: New York, a woman named Martine Bancroft, at the Paramount Hotel. John comments that it's back to New York as he and the Ghost Rider ride away, not noticing the presence of Dr. Strange, who is watching them leave.

Morbius: The Living Vampire (1992) # 1

Cover Artist: Ron Wagner

Published: September 1992
Original Price: $2.75

Title: "Rise of the Midnight Sons, Part 3"
Writer: Len Kaminski
Artist: Ron Wagner
Inker: Mike Witherby
Letterer: Janice Chiang
Colorist: Gregory Wright
Editor: Bobbie Chase
Editor In Chief: Tom DeFalco

SYNOPSIS

In New York City, Michael Morbius watches a young woman as she walks down a deserted alley.  He drops down on her, kills her, and drinks her blood like a wild animal, only to scream in remorse when he realizes that he's killed yet another innocent person.  Meanwhile, Lilith and her two Lilin, Pilgrim and Blackout, enter a night club to find two more of her wayward demonic children: Fang and Nakota.

Ghost Rider and John Blaze ride through Times Square and arrive at a hotel, which contains the woman they have been sent to fine.  Martine Bancroft answers the door and quickly fills them in on the history of Michael Morbius.  He was a Nobel Prize winning biologist who was dying of a blood disease, and when he attempted to cure himself he accidentally transformed himself into a "living vampire".  She was in love with him, and now along with a scientist that's working with her she will either cure Morbius or kill him to put him out of his misery.  Ghost Rider and Blaze agree to help her, but David Langford, the scientist working with Martine, has plans of his own to kill Morbius for a mysterious "Dr. Paine".  Back at the night club, Lilith uses Nakota's mutated eyes to locate the whereabouts of Morbius and Ghost Rider, then sends Fang on a mission to Langford's lab, where the Lilin poisons the doctor's serum with his own blood before leaving.

Martine, Langford, Ghost Rider, and Blaze track Morbius to his daytime sanctuary, and when they find him the vampire attempts to escape.  He's quickly captured and brought to Langford's lab, but when the doctor injects him with the serum that's meant to kill him, Morbius instead begins to mutate and breaks free.  When Martine, Ghost Rider, and Blaze get back to the lab, they find that Morbius has escaped.  While Ghost Rider and Blaze leave to recapture Morbius, Langford calls Dr. Paine and tells him of the "complication".  Meanwhile, Morbius is being assaulted by sunlight as he attempts to find somewhere to hide, and remembers his friend, a doctor named Jacob.  Desperate, he reaches Jacob's apartment and crashes through his window.  Morbius wakes up in Jacob's exam room and finds that his vampiric condition has been reversed, through only temporarily.  Jacob theorizes that if he finds the serum that he was injected with they could develop a treatment to extend his periods of normalcy.  Morbius agrees and goes to a leather clothing store, where he purchases a new outfit to use as he hunts.

Back at the lab, Martine overhears Langford telling three of Paine's minions that the serum was meant to kill Morbius.  She pulls a gun on them, but Langford takes it away from her and shoots her.  When Morbius arrives at the lab and finds Martine, she dies in his arms and he is unable to keep himself from sucking the blood out of her gunshot wound.  Langford and Paine's men enter the lab and an enraged Morbius attacks them.  The fight starts a fire in the lab, and after Morbius drinks Langford's blood he finds the serum that could be used to cure him.  The lab explodes behind him, causing him to drop the serum to the street below, where it is caught by Ghost Rider, who has returned with Blaze.  Morbius explains what happened with Martine and Langford, and Ghost Rider gives Morbius the Penance Stare to determine his guilt.  Morbius vows that if he is to survive by drinking blood, it shall be the blood of those who deserve it, the blood of the guilty.  Ghost Rider agrees, but before he leaves he threatens to return for Morbius if he does not keep his vow.  Later, at the Daily Bugle, the discovery of several blood-drained bodies is overheard by Peter Parker, Spider-Man, who swears to find and stop Morbius.

ANNOTATIONS 

"Rise of the Midnight Sons" continues in Darkhold: Pages From the Book of Sins (1992) # 1.

Ghost Rider and Blaze last appeared in Ghost Rider (1990) # 29 and appear next in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 2.  They were given the location of Martine Bancroft by Clara Menninger, the psychic from the Quentin Carnival, in Ghost Rider/Blaze: Spirits of Vengeance (1992) # 1.

Morbius last appeared in Spider-Man (1990) # 13-14.

This issue came polybagged with a poster of Morbius.

This issue was reprinted in the Spirits of Vengeance: Rise of the Midnight Sons trade paperback.

REVIEW

"Rise of the Midnight Sons" rolls on with the debut of the next title, this one focusing on a long-time Spider-Man villain who definitely deserved his time in the spotlight.

Morbius was an intriguing character, and one that felt both decidedly retro and appropriately 90s with the amount of vaguely graphic violence displayed in this opening issue.  Having a vampire as one of the anchor characters of Marvel's new super-horror line was an obvious move, but also one that came with its own set of challenges.  At this time in Marvel continuity, all of the vampires (including big bad Dracula) had been eradicated by the Montesi Formula, and while that had begun to be reversed in the pages of Doctor Strange it was still a solid rule that vampires weren't allowed to run around the Marvel Universe.  There were a couple of exceptions of course, which is what allowed Hannibal King to be a "proto-vampire" in Nightstalkers, but for a true vampire there was only one option left.  Morbius worked well, because he was a vampire created by science and therefore divorced from any of the mystical or supernatural elements that came with standard vampires.  Like with Ghost Rider, it allowed the creators to do horror stories without having to rely on supernatural or magic elements.  Morbius was allowed to stand on his own without being saddled with all of the vampire mythology baggage...at least at first, but that's a story for a later review.

Like with the first issue of Spirits of Vengeance, this debut issue of Morbius was an excellent introduction to the character and the creators while simultaneously moving forward the "Midnight Sons" crossover.  The latter aspect did take a backseat, more so than in the forthcoming Darkhold and Nightstalkers, but it was still present and it did provide significant alterations to Morbius himself.  From what I remember, Morbius was a series that had already been approved for publication, and editor Bobbie Chase was able to rope it into the Midnight Sons launch.  You can tell that Kaminski was much more interested in setting up Morbius as a protagonist in his own right than in just making it a Ghost Rider spin-off.  That's what a lot of readers were assuming at the time, of course, that the Midnight Sons comics were just going to be weak Ghost Rider derivatives, and at least at the beginning each title was able to keep its own identity separate from the parent title.  Morbius as an ongoing story engine had much the same premise as Ghost Rider: seemingly evil anti-hero choosing to prey on the guilty.  On the surface, that's not a very distinct or even intriguing series concept, but when you factor in Len Kaminski's characterization of Morbius things get a lot more interesting.

Kaminski's take on the character follows naturally from where the character has been in the past, even though he was considered a "villain" by Spider-Man he was always a reluctant one.  Morbius, some may remember, even held down a series of his own in the pages of Adventures Into Fear back in the 1970s, so he certainly was a viable feature character.  Revamping him into a protagonist with his own supporting cast wasn't that difficult a job, even if it cost poor Martine Bancroft to be fridged in the first issue, but Kaminski really makes you empathize and relate to poor Michael Morbius.  Kaminski even pays lip service to the inevitable Ghost Rider comparison during the confrontation at the end of the issue, with Ghost Rider remarking that he thought Morbius would be an important player in his life, but in reality he is just a small player in Morbius' life.

The other factor in this book's success was artist Ron Wagner, who had been a solid Marvel artist for the last few years prior to getting the Morbius gig.  He worked on the Punisher titles for a while, then turned in a really fantastic stint on Ghost Rider (in fact, my preference would have been to keep him on Ghost Rider instead of Morbius, but that's just me).  His work here is extremely well done, better even than his work on Ghost Rider a few months previous, and he really sells the story that Kaminski was telling.  His work on Morbius himself is a great example of how to show a character that's hit the lowest point he possibly could, making the splash page of him in his new leather outfit seem like a genuine sea change for him.

Morbius was another success of the Midnight Sons launch, and while it wasn't the strongest (my vote goes to Spirit of Vengeance) it was definitely a solid debut.

Grade: A